3C Community Profile: Humboldt Park
Take a stroll down the Paseo Boricua corridor on Division Street and it’s easy to see why Humboldt Park is one of Chicago’s most vibrant…
Grants
Featured
Our Grantmaking Strategy
For more than 100 years, The Chicago Community Trust has convened, supported, funded, and accelerated the work of community members and changemakers committed to strengthening the Chicago region. From building up our civic infrastructure to spearheading our response to the Great Recession, the Trust has brought our community together to face pressing challenges and seize our greatest opportunities. Today, that means confronting the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
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Grant Recipient
Chicago Community Foundation
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Grant Recipient
United States Curling Association
The United States Curling Association membership is currently comprised of almost 20,000 members and 180 clubs across the country with representation in almost every state. As one of the fastest growing sports in the country due in large part to accessibility, USA Curling must stay relevant with its membership and continue to provide the necessary resources for clubs to grow and recruit members. This includes providing clubs and members with the resources they need to not only play the game and maintain ice, but also provide help them educational information and awareness about the sport within their respective communities through youth programming, hosted Bonspiels, corporate events and Learn to Curls, just to name a few. The Spirit of Curling has been a long standing tradition since the 16th century. It embodies skill and precision on and off the ice. Curling clubs across the country are embodying the spirt of curling and with the help of USA Curling by ensuring that everyone feels welcomed to the sport and has accessibility. We kindly request $50,000 to help with general operating funds that will in turn promote membership growth and national participation.
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Grant Recipient
Urban Equities, Inc.
An additional $6,000 in Grant funds is requested in order to supplement a previously-awarded $94,000 grant, all of which has been and will continue to be used to absorb a portion of predevelopment costs required to launch Soul City Kitchens, a shared commercial kitchen incubator.
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Grant Recipient
Basils Harvest
Basil’s Harvest seeks a renewal grant to support the RAH initiative to build a procurement process in the Chicago Foodshed, expand soil health research, support communication along the supply chain system.
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Grant Recipient
League of Black Women
The League of Black Women (LBW) has founded an Entrepreneurship Accelerator and Incubator Institute (EAII) as a program to close the funding gap for Black women-owned companies in the manufacturing space with a specific focus on acquiring and/or expanding existing firms. Studies have shown that the success rate of entrepreneurs that acquire companies is much higher than those that pursue the startup route. Moreover, the skill sets honed in the corporate sector are more compatible and applicable to acquiring and expanding existing operating companies. Therefore, EAII will design and study the feasibility of expanding the size and accelerating the growth curve of existing businesses and future businesses started and owned by Black women. We will also create the metrics to measure the improved outcomes of businesses owned by Black women as evidenced by growth, hiring, and increased wealth of ownership. The focus of the EAII is growth of businesses started by Black women. The EAII should provide both new and existing compatible businesses with an environment that supports their growth from small to mid-sized business, increase their likelihood of success, and increase their likelihood to grow employment with workers from the surrounding community.
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Grant Recipient
Economic Awareness Council
The EAC has worked with the City Colleges of Chicago, CCC, as well as the Illinois Students Assistance Commission, ISAC, to develop a proposal for a pilot program to provide targeted opportunities for financial capability support to City Colleges of Chicago students generally and CCC’s MAP grant recipients specifically. The EAC, ISAC and the City Colleges of Chicago propose that a pilot financial capability initiative be offered for students receiving financial aid in Illinois, specifically MAP recipients and City Colleges of Chicago students. This pilot would ask students to take simple, quick, and effective measures to begin to build their own financial security. Specifically, student borrowers would be asked/strongly encouraged to make a budget to demonstrate how they will use the financial aid funds that they receive and otherwise manage their college costs. An online budget tool would be offered to support this objective. This budget tool is customized to include college specific items and average costs to help students’ estimate both semester and monthly expenses. The budget tool would be completed online allowing for simple tracking of completion as well as simple referrals of students who need additional assistance to resources at the college specific level in Illinois via ISAC and its extensive statewide resources. The EAC has already developed an online budgeting tool that has been used by other large IL universities, and this tool is now freely available online for all IL youth. Additionally, youth would also be strongly encouraged to consider banking and direct deposit of financial aid funds through brief online financial capability resources. Students would be referred to Bank On Illinois and Bank On Chicago for safe affordable banking products that would be available to them as needed. Finally, more intensive financial mentoring and referrals to appropriate financial aid officers, external financial services partners, etc. would be shared through the peer financial mentors trained by the EAC. The EAC, in partnership with CCC and ISAC, has initiated a mini-pilot for in-person mentoring services at one City of Chicago college, Olive Harvey. This initial stage offering, lasted 6 weeks this spring including training. The pilot went well with one financial mentor who offered support to over 65 youth through financial literacy events, 1-1 meetings, etc. There is an option for a limited number of mentors to serve others at a variety of colleges within the City Colleges of Chicago system through online mentoring services as well. The EAC’s peer financial mentoring program has a strong track record as the organization’s mentoring programs with the City of Chicago and the One Summer Chicago youth employment system provide over 150 events with attendance reach to over 10,000 youth each year achieving outstanding financial capability results for youth in this program.
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Grant Recipient
YOUNG INVINCIBLES
Since 2018, the Chicago chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Young Invincibles (YI) have been statewide leaders on advocacy and programming to transform the way Illinois’ colleges and universities support student mental health.
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Grant Recipient
Illinois Stewardship Alliance
The Alliance will raise the visibility of the local food sector and help create a policy environment that is more favorable to local food businesses by organizing farmers and eaters, working in coalition on issues, educating policymakers and media.